Speaker: James Breyley, Technical Instructor
Introduce yourself! What is your role and how long have you been with ACI Learning?
James Breyley: Hello, I'm James Breyley. I'm brand new to ACI Learning here in San Antonio, TX. I'm about to teach my first class. I'm super excited to meet everybody.
Tell us about your professional journey.
James Breyley: So after getting my certifications, my first job was doing Apple help desk support for iOS. Eventually, I moved into MacOS and their other iDevices. After that, I worked for the government doing help desk work at the DHA supporting basically all the military treatment facilities throughout the world, and then after that I worked for an MSP here in San Antonio where we got to actually kind of touch every little bit of networking for small businesses from just a couple of users to, you know, upwards of over 100. We had several clients there as well, definitely over 100 clients. But yeah, it's been super fun and after all that experience, I get to come and teach here.
What is your favorite thing about the IT industry?
James Breyley: I think my favorite thing about the IT industry is really kind of like the endless possibilities. So like, you can be in the classic break/fix type of tech work or help center type of stuff. You can do more of the back end infrastructure support, like networking or security. Then there's like development, front end development, working with anything on the back end like database administrators to auditing and compliance, all of that super fun stuff. So there's really just no matter what you like to do, there's gonna be something for you.
What has been the most valuable lesson you have learned from your education?
James Breyley: The most valuable thing I've learned from my education experience is that you're never done learning. You have to really be open to continuing education and I think especially open to new opportunities. You know, you might get involved in a type of IT that you maybe didn't fully understand or know about before and it's super exciting to you or maybe you learn it's not super exciting and at least now you know that you can move on from that comfortably.
What's something you want students to know about you?
James Breyley: I'd like the students to know that it wasn't that long ago that I was taking these same types of classes and I started off, like I said, in a help desk position but I kept learning. I was open to new things and I never gave up. You got to stay positive, if you don't get the job you like right off the bat that's not necessarily a bad thing. We all have to start somewhere and it's really all about you, how you can make things work, and what you're willing to learn, and really the sky is the limit. It's all up to you.
What advice would you give to students starting out in the IT industry?
James Breyley: So some advice to people starting out, like I said, you got to know your basics. I mean, if you're looking to get into some of the more advanced stuff, you really have to have a solid foundation before you kind of move on. But that being said, just to try to find ways to make learning fun. There's tons of awesome videos, like tons, to go out there tons of content to consume, they can make it fun. There's lots of little ways that you can kind of like make studying fun and enjoyable for you. Like I said before, just be open to new opportunities. Things might not work out the exact way you hoped but you'll be better for that experience.
